Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Keith Olberman Raises $1.7 Million for free clinics - 1000 treated in New Orleans

The first of the free clinics in states where conservative Democrats are considering joining Republicans to filibuster health care reform in the Senate took place last weekend in New Orleans. Over 1000 people saw doctors for the first time in a long time. The statistics were overwhelming. 83% of the patients were employed. 90% of the people seen had two diagnoses. 82%. had a life threatening condition, diabetes, high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease. Four people were taken directly from the clinic to a hospital because their condition was life threatening at that moment. One woman was told she had stage 4 breast cancer with tumors throughout her body. She has decided not to seek treatment. It's too late for her. She will be a statistic, one of the 45,000 who die every year for lack of adequate health care.

There are several more free clinics that are scheduled. Go to Freeclinics.us for more information

Senator Mary Landrieu's office was asked to attend, but she had a "scheduling conflict." What kind of person who represents New Orleans would not show up to see the devastation that lack of health care has wrought on her constituents? What kind of person threatens to block health care reform without seeing the devastation lack of health has wreaked on the citizens of her own state? I just don't get it Senator Landrieu. Shame on you.

12 comments:

vomamike said...

It is clear to me that the biggest impediment to health care reform is the corruption that campaign financing has wrought. It is no surprise to me that Congress is shirking its duty - given the pushback by the Right and the unholy influence big business has on Congress. Unfortunately, these clinics are but a band aid on a gushing wound.

Bruce Fealk said...

Mike, I totally agree with your statement about a band-aid on a gushing wound. I think Olbermann's intent was to put pressure on the Senators that are threatening to join a Republican filibuster on health care reform.

At least on the surface, it doesn't appear to have worked on New Orleans. Shame on Mary Landrieu.

Chris said...

Didn't big business get it's biggest payoff by the Obama stimulus bill? Are you guys so blinded by your idealogue that you don't see what the Democrats are doing too? All you on the left can do is deflect everything bad on the Republicans. Keep it up as most Americans are getting sick of it and the left.

Bruce Fealk said...

Chris, it's only your little ideological world that believes that Bush wasn't a total disaster for America. It takes more than a year to turn back 12 years of Republican rule of Congress and 8 disastrous years of the Cheney presidency.

Some Democrats are not free of blame, as I mention Mary Landrieu not attending the free health clinic in her home state in New Orleans no less.

Democrats are not perfect by a long shot, but I do believe they have the peoples interests more at heart than the Republicans and it's the Republicans that are more beholden to their corporate masters. That's why health care reform has been so hard.

I'm all for real campaign finance reform that hopefully will do away with or greatly reduce corporate donations and lobbying.

DJ said...

Bruce, stop feeding the troll. Just because he has to beg liberals to come on his blog so he can get some semblance of readership doesn't mean you have to stoop to his level.

vomamike said...

Chris - you are right SOME of the Democrats "are doing it too". There is however a suptle, but significant differance. NO Republican is supporting real health care reform, whereas most Democrats are. The Rights campaign of disinformation & misinformation has weakened the resolve that should have been there in Congress. While I submit, the Republican Party is a whole owned subsiderary of the Chamber of Commerce - Democrats as a whole - are not. Having said that - it is to those few Democrats who have been corrupted, that this fight continues.

Chris said...

Bruce the last 2 years have been run mostly by Democrats. They had both houses of Congress. But you do shift blame no matter what. I didn't like everything Bush did and I have made that clear. You on the left hated the wars and never shut up obout them. Now not one word out of you liberal Al Quida mouths. I didn't like going to war but one we were in it we needed to win. You don't care about winning the wars do you? And you aren't screaming to Obama to get them out. I didn't like Bush's liberal spending. And I made my voice heard on that too. I know you on the left felt the same way. And now that Obama and Congress are spending twice as Bush ever did you don't say one word. I'm still protesting our spending. I'm not a hypocrit like most of you on the left.Almost every one of you on the left abandoned your protests when the Democrats took all the power. You don't say anything about the spending,Deficit,National Debt,the Wars,jobs creation and the economy are going down faster under Obama and this Congress and you make up excuses. Thank God you liberals make up only 20% of the population. While moderates to conservatives make up the other 80%. Yeh and you call us the fringe when conservatives are the largest group. There are twice as many conservatives as there are liberals.

Chris said...

Hey, djtyg. I have the readers on my blog. I don't need to beg. I have over 1300 hits on my profile alone while Bruce has 1600. Too bad I've only been doing this 1 month. When you add up all the other conservative blogs out there the numbers are mind numbing.lol.Bruce is smart he wants to change minds and he knows I have a lot of liberal and conservative readers on my blog. djtyg what have you done lately? You are too afraid to face the conservatives. Either because you don't truly have a clue what to say or you crack way too easy because of being feeble. At least Bruce,vomamike and JoeC have the guts and fortatude to stand up for what they truely believe in. I don't respect what they say but I respect the fact that they say it. I let freedom of speach rule the blog and I post everyone and everything. My blog is run like a capitolist would run a blog. I've got an idea my full face friend. Why don't you start a blog and lets see how you do with it? I bet a brainic like you will be a blogging dinamo. Or you could eat another twinky and call me a troll. Lets see what you are made of.

Chris said...

vomamike, do you know how much this bill will cost us? Do you know how many people wont get covered under this bill? The Republican bill will leave millions without healthcare just like the Democrat bill. We know that the Republican bill is a baby step bill without a net cost to the tax payers. Republicans and Democrats need to find the money for the bills before the spend it. Did you know that since Obama took over there has been $98 billion lost in govt spending waste? What are you going to do with the 30 million people not covered by the Obama bill? And what about the estimated costs of from $1.2 trillion to $2 trillion it will cost us. We are broke or haven't you noticed it? Will the treasury just keep devalueing our dollar? Or do we just pass along the liberal debts to the next generation? This is a large purchase and we need to treat it as such. Lets start by reading the bill.

Bruce Fealk said...

Chris, Bush wasn't honest about anything. Part of the reason the budget was off was because Bush kept the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan off the books, so that obviously skews the numbers.

Bush's spending was on the wrong things, war, tax cuts for the richest 1% of American, counting on tinkle down economics.

Obama's spending kept us from economic ruin caused by greedy Wall Street bankers that created risky financial instruments. And now they want to give themselves bonuses with our money. Hopefully the Democrats will be successful in keeping that from happening. Wall Street always says they need to pay huge bonuses to keep the good talent. Well, that "talent" is what put us in this position to begin with.

According to the interview President Obama did on Fox "News" last night he is worried about the deficit, but right now the deficit is not the main concern. Putting Americans back to work is. The stimulus wasn't as big as it needed to be because Obama gave in to Republicans that wanted more tax cuts. Well, that hasn't worked out as well as the Republicans told us it would and now we need to spend more on infrastructure in order to put more Americans back to work and get our trade policy back in balance.

The conservatives you talk about are not the far right that you're part of Chris. There may even be some Democrats that are part of that group that consider themselves "conservative."

As far as the war protests, I think there will be more anti-war protests soon. I'm going to New York this weekend to be part of a coalition that will be considering how to help President Obama do the right thing and leave Afghanistan and Iraq before we kill more innocent Iraqis and Afghanis without anything to show for the deaths.

Speaking of wasting money, Bush got us into two unnecessary wars that will cost our country at least $3 trillion and kill who knows how many soldiers and innocent civilians.

The Democrats have read the bill and they will probably spend two full days in the Senate reading the bill and I know Gary Peters has read the bill, so that is another straw man Republicans throw out there.

Let's help the 45 million Americans that have no health coverage and keep 45,000 people a year from dying because they have not coverage.

vomamike said...

Chris - no one is arguing that this Democratic Bill (House) is great. But I have read summaries and analysis by some pretty respectable sources and they all seem to agree - it is far better than doing nothing. Again if it was up to me, it would be Medicare for all.

No one is disagreeing that our country in heavily in debt. And I am not even going to complain about the cause. However, given the circumstances our economy is in - I agree with Paul Krugman, the debt is the last thing we need to worry about right now. Bringing down the debt at this time is not the answer to solving the problems our economy has. We are obviously arguing about the solution to jobs - and healthcare. It isn't going to happen with your tried and failed "trickle down economics" policy pushed by the Right. Hell, even George senior called it "vodoo economics".

DJ said...

Well, you see Chris, I just don't care what you have to say. I know that's a shock to you, that you like to scream and pray that someone hears you, but I honestly and truly couldn't give a rats ass about your opinions.

But I'm thrilled that you care about mine.

And I already write on a blog that gets way more hits then you. Try to troll on there and see how quick your ass gets banned.

I know you're begging me to read your blog because you really get about 5 readers a day, and one of them is your mom. That's why you keep trying to get me to come around.

But not going to happen. Because you're a tree falling in the forest. Nobody's around to hear it.